


Two Hundred Days

by OfficialStarsandGutters



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4553487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfficialStarsandGutters/pseuds/OfficialStarsandGutters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Richard and Severin were together as teenagers. Richard doesn't cope well when Severin goes off to war.<br/>*<br/>As of tonight, it has been two hundred days in total that Severin has been gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Hundred Days

As of tonight, it has been two hundred days in total that Severin has been gone.

Richard has taken over a thousand pills since he last said goodbye at the train station. He has cut himself a grand total of six hundred and thirty seven times. He has lost count of how many accidental overdoses he has endured: of the stomach aches, the nausea, the nights spent on the bathroom floor, crying and vomiting until his eyes are red rimmed and his body aches.

He writes Severin pretty letters with colourful prose. Tells him he loves him, misses him, hopes Severin is looking after himself and keeping safe. He sends his love to Sebastian. He includes pictures of Pez. He does not mention that he probably has more scars than Severin now, or that he barely even goes to auditions any more; that the roles he does get are all shitty productions over sleazy pubs. He doesn't explain how the fear and worry that someday Severin won't write back has become a monster inside of him, that the loneliness gnaws at him until he aches, that swallowing handfuls of pills or downing full bottles of wine are the only ways he has found to silence it.

He is an actor. Even high and crumbling apart, he's still good at that, and so he builds a fictional world out of his letters, lets Severin believe in the fairytale.

In some ways, Richard is lucky. Jim bought him his beautiful flat and put enough money in his bank account that Richard doesn't have to worry about finding it empty any time soon. Perhaps Jim would be less generous if he knew what Richard spent it on, but Richard is lucky in that Jim does not visit him very often. He does not enquire after him. Jim does not, particularly, appear to care for Richard. Not in any obvious way.

No one does.

Except Severin. His kind, sweet, handsome Severin, who is off in some war torn country being shot at. His father's choice, not his, and Richard is so, so angry that Lord Moran has taken away the only goodness in his life.

Nothing lives up to Severin, so Richard doesn't try to find anything. He just keeps himself numb. It helps him wade through the waiting. Eight more tablets, all lined up neatly on the burgundy covers of his bed; because of them he'll make it through to day two hundred and one.

 


End file.
